


Saunter Vaguely Downwards

by HannahPelham



Category: Silent Witness (TV)
Genre: F/M, fluffff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28046325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HannahPelham/pseuds/HannahPelham
Summary: Harry realises he needs to do something about his love for Nikki, so he does.Shameless fluff.
Relationships: Nikki Alexander/Harry Cunningham
Kudos: 6





	Saunter Vaguely Downwards

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theinvisibledisaster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theinvisibledisaster/gifts).



> For theinvisibledisaster, for making me watch Good Omens, which in turn gave me the inspiration for this.

> #  “Crowley (An Angel who did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards)”

― Terry Pratchett,  Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

~~~~

Harry Cunningham didn’t so much as fall in love with Nikki Alexander, he seemed to saunter vaguely downwards into complete adoration. The day he first met her, he felt like she would be important to his life. He, the ever-womanising Dr Harry Cunningham, rarely thought that about women, but for some reason Nikki Alexander felt different. 

The first time he met her, impressing him with her facial reconstructions, he knew she was interesting. She was intelligent, obviously, but she would be, wouldn’t she? Harry would only feel this strongly about somebody without them being fiercely intelligent, intelligent enough to match him. Normally it was some blonde bimbo who hardly knew her arse from her elbow, it allowed him to remain emotionally away from everything he was doing with her. Nikki was, of course, different. She would always be different. 

Every single time a word had escaped Nikki Alexander’s mouth had the potential to make Harry Cunningham fall even more in love with her. 

That christening party, that damn christening party, where he’d somewhat drunkenly kissed another woman when all he wanted was to be kissing Nikki in that kitchen. He didn’t care where he was geographically when he kissed Nikki, really, he just wanted to do it. Just once. He had to know what it would be like, how perfect he assumed it would be. 

He knew he had to do something about it, had to have one glorious kiss with Nikki, and not like the one in the pub either. That one had been to make her be quiet, he hadn’t savoured the moment enough. He’d been distracted by why he was doing it, he hadn’t had time to enjoy the moment. At that point in his life, Harry hadn’t quite realised how in love with her he was at that point. That was years ago, he was much more in love with her now. 

Every woman he’d kissed, dated, shagged, in the time since he’d known Nikki Alexander had been a pale imitation of what he was sure Nikki would be like. 

He knew he had to do something about it. Being this in love and not doing anything about it would surely kill him. He decided to do something on the day Nikki walked into the Lyell Centre looking lovelier than she ever had.

(In reality, of course, she looked exactly the same as she always did, but Harry thought she looked lovelier and lovelier every day). 

As he sat at his desk, unoccupied by Nikki for once, he tried to come up with a plan. Should he offer to take her out for dinner, and tell her then? Should he buy her flowers? He’d leave it until he found the perfect plan, he reasoned, and soon enough he was back in the Morgue, emptying a suspicious death’s stomach contents into a bucket. As Nikki looked over from the next slab, his mind started whirring again. He had to find the perfect way, and soon. What if she met somebody and fell in love with them? Then he’d have no chance of winning her heart. He had to come up with a plan, and fast. 

As it turned out, trying to tell Dr Nikki Alexander he loved her was a very hard thing for Dr Harry Cunningham. He supposed it just showed how important Nikki was to him, and how much he did really love her. 

“Nikki, do you want to go for dinner?” He asked, mid-afternoon, fully expecting her to have plans. 

“Yes, that sounds nice” Nikki replied, smiling at him, “Shall we ask Leo too?”

“I-I thought it would be nice just the two of us” Harry quickly said, hoping Nikki would get the message without him having to spell it out. Luckily for him, she did. She smiled at him sweetly and got back to her facial reconstruction. Harry let out a long sigh. That was the first scary bit out of the way. He could relax a bit too, he was fairly sure she knew what was coming, or at least had some sort of idea. The three of them, Harry, Nikki, and Leo, liked going out and doing something that didn’t involve dead bodies. The fact that Harry had specifically said just the two of them had to have set off some kind of siren in Nikki’s head. 

When Nikki turned up at the restaurant they’d agreed on in central London, she was wearing a dress Harry had never seen before. It was short, navy blue and black tie dye, with a cowl neck and spaghetti straps. With heels on her feet, and red lipstick on her lips, Nikki felt like she was on top of the world. 

Harry swore he’d never seen anybody as beautiful as Nikki. 

He had to work very hard not to just kiss her and drag her back to his place. He was determined to do the right thing by Nikki, though. Wine her and dine her and let them have a real date, just in case it was the only one. 

They’d chosen somewhere similar to their usual with Leo, but not exactly their usual. They had to have somewhere that was theirs, Harry reasoned with himself. They sat at a secluded table in the corner, and left to their own devices. 

“Harry?” Nikki asked after a moment. 

“Hmm?” Harry replied, looking up at her. In his moment of stress, deciding what to say to her, he’d turned into something of a space cadet. 

Nikki reached across the table and took one of Harry’s hands in hers. She’d never seen Harry this nervous before. 

“You alright?” She asked softly. His smile back, the widest she’d ever seen, seemed to tell her that he was. 

They ate their dinner and chatted about work, as they always did, but this time it felt different. Both of them felt a pressure to impress, but especially Harry. He’d asked Nikki on a date, he’d been the one to initiate things, he wanted to impress Nikki and knock her socks so far off that she’d never need anybody but him for the rest of her days. 

Of course, what Harry didn’t know, was that he didn’t need to. When they left the restaurant, and Nikki took Harry’s hand in hers, all his fears were gone. They wandered through central London, popping into a bar every now and then for a drink, before they ended up on the tube back to Nikki’s house. He didn’t know when they’d decided on Nikki’s house, but he supposed Nikki had done that because she knew that he tended to take his quick shags back to his place, and she didn’t want to feel like one of them. 

Nikki closed the front door behind them, and turned around to see Harry looking at her with more love and adoration than she’d ever seen in one person. She rushed forward into his arms, her lips connecting with his for the first, real time. 

Harry Cunningham didn’t so much fall in love with Nikki Alexander, he seemed to plummet straight down into adoring and worshiping her for the rest of his days. When she kissed him, and pushed him up against the wall in her hallway, well, Harry swore he could have died from happiness. 


End file.
